Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Kindle Fire is perfect for comics and art book. Finally, something that will be a great fit for comic book, Manga, and art book on digital format. I have ipad and I love it but it doesn't fit for reading comics. Somehow it is heavy and not so comfortable to just laid back and read something for hours. Unlike my kindle, I can spend hours reading without feeling I am holding some heavy hardware device. After reading many reviews, and as I suspected that sooner or later Amazon will come up with lighter e-reader in color (too bad, it is not e ink), the $199 tablet runs a heavily modified version of Android, hooks neatly into Amazon’s gigantic book collections, and is designed for multimedia consumption (movies, videos) and, more than anything, perfect for reading. And it is by far the lightest of all the tablet at 14.6 hours with 7 inches screen. Though the Kindle Fire has just 8GB, but most likely you will be connected with Amazon cloud for storage. That's like unlimited storage as long as you can afford it.

Also Amazon has built out a giant digital media catalog, along with an Android app store to for Kindle Fire, just like regular Kindle, in place before it delivered the key piece of hardware. Even though the Kindle Fire itself isn’t groundbreaking as far as devices go, but it should provide the most convenient platform for accessing Amazon’s many services. And by selling the Kindle Fire for $199, Amazon will reach consumers who want some of the media consumption capabilities of the iPad but weren’t willing to spend $500 or more. Beyond that like I said, perfect for art book, comics and Manga consumption. Speaking of comics or graphic novel, I should hurry up and finish mine. And hopefully, we can see my very first comics or idrawgirls art book in Amazon Kindle store sometimes soon.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Re design character from the old version. As you see it before on my previous post on a tutorial, how to paint feathers. This one is a character design that I re-design from the old version I quickly designed on May 2007. And surprisingly it is one of the images on my very first post on this blog. You can see the first blog post of idrawgirls.com here drawing and sketch collection from May to June 2007. But I think I actually did the raven girl character in 2005. That was way more than four years ago.My first intention when I start this website was to just doodle and possibly start a graphic novel online. But it turned out to be a huge collection of "How to draw", "How to paint" and "art tutorial". I had no idea that how it would turned out when I started my first post.Then when people start asking me how do I do a particular image, I then start to do little step by step how to. Then more visitors are asking me how to draw and paint more things. Eventually, I start making small video one after another. I think back than it has maximum length of five to seven minutes. Who would know that idrawgirls.com or idrawgirls.blogspot would turn out the way it is? Now we have way over 200 tutorials and more than 700 blog post about art tutorials and technique. Thank you guys.I just spend a good four hours to paint over the old version. Quite a bit of re work on the figure itself, then clean up the color and value. Add and re-design part of the costume. But for the most part a lot of element remain the same. It is a lot more refreshing and now I feel a lot less shameful because I made the bad one looks better now. I just wish I have more time at the moment to fancy it up more, but now I am fixing the back end of the website. I just want to paint, not code. blah.

Monday, September 26, 2011

How to paint simple background with your character design. In step by step how to create a background for your character tutorial, I will show you how to paint and create a very basic simple background along with your character without having to spend much time on the painting. Backdrop of the scene often very important when you are designing a character. It can express to the viewers where is the location, what is happening, and when is this event occurs. Little hint of background can add so much more into your concept art. It can even enhance the emotional impact of the character and evoke feeling from the audiences.So if it is just a piece of concept art, you can just convey the backdrop by using simple value and palette that is already in the scene. In figure 1, if you look that the area with red circle A, you will see soft blue cloud. From that area, you can use your color picker to pick two different value (tone) to establish the harder edge and create form. In this case, I am trying to paint a further away mountain range in blue hue. As you see in figure 2, I already paint harder edge to establish the mountain range and the sky. Hint, lighter value being the sky and darker value supposedly, mountain range. It is just simple few strokes of paint but you can already see what it is going to be. Now I will just leave it as big simple shape of big mountain peak without detail and move on to figure 3. In figure 3, I am trying to paint mid-ground or background that is closer than the previous mountain peak. In the red circle B, you will see brown dirt tone again the area has soft or lost edge. Same process as I did previously, I create a harder edge and trying to make some form of lower hills shape with dark brown dirt tone. After you paint simple bigger shape to establish the object you want to convey in your background. You can now go in for more detail, be careful not to over do it. The result should be those mountain range you can see in the last image in the bottom

Tip on painting background detail:1) Use only the value and color that is already in the area. Even if the range of value is limited, but little value can goes a long way. If not necessary, do not introduce any darker or lighter value in the indicated area. Though lighter value is more forgiven because it conveys the object is far away2) Do not put too much detail on it, just paint enough to make readable.3) Darker value will bring the object closer to viewer, lighter value will push it further away.4) Harder edge will bring the object closer, softer edge will push it further away.

Hope this painting tips are helpful. As for what I did on the right side of the background is very similar process, just look a little more random and more alien like landscape.

Friday, September 23, 2011

How to paint feathers quick step by step method for concept art. This tutorial is not a refine or finish illustration of painting crisp and realistic feather by any mean. I am trying to show you a quick way of convey a specific material, feathers. It is very similar to how I paint fur from the previous tutorial, how to paint fur on a Mongol warrior armor. But fur is a bit more refine and has a lot more soft edge.I basically start off with just a silhouette of random spikes in size and shape. I was just trying to paint over one of my rough concept from 2007, the Raven girl. Then her armor or costume has a lot of feathers so I thought it would be good to do a quick video tutorial on how to paint feathers, again concept art way. Then I just pick the color and value from the back ground then using 20% opacity and gently paint more shapes to separate each layer of feather. Once I get the mix value of the base of the feathers, then I use 80-100% to paint over the big silhouette. I try to define a few feathers at time. Rather than focus on making each individual one to look like feather, I focus on the over all shape, value and edge. As seen below in the step by step images. It would be a lot easier to understand when you watch the digital painting video tutorial below.

Feather costume unfinished concept art, WIP

Watch the video tutorial, How to paint features

FREE download, Photoshop custom brushes!

Below are painting feathers step by step images.

This is an old old rough idea from 2007.It looks horrible now that I look at it again. This is a good example of how people can improve with time spend practice and study.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Wow, I just saw this video from this guy, Brusspup on Youtube. It's the same guy that made the video about illusion of value, light and shadow create illusion of value. His videos are really impressive. Now he made another video about Animated Optical Illusion. Static images on aa piece of paper and ipad (on second video) are brought to life by passing a transparent sheet with black lines over the screen. I always love these when I was a kid and until now, I still love it. It always amazed me how our brain works and visually we are being fool by simple things.I also wonder why is it that way. And most of all who or how do we come up with such optical illusion tricks.Watch the video, it is very awesome.Oh and by the way, he print his piece of paper from Photoshop. If anyone know how to make this kind of trick, let me know.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Photoshop painting tutorial smudge tool for digital painters and artists. This post I am going to show you guys some trick and tip on smudge tool. A lot of artists love it, but I only use it from time to time. Mostly if I want to soften the edge or blend value, I reply on soft brush (default round in Photoshop). It can create effective enough result for me and it is fast. Since I don't have much patience, I often lack of attention to detail in most of my painting. As you see in most of my videos, I love painting fast and just get the point across as conceptual piece. Once in a while I will spend days doing finish painting. For some professional illustrators, they are all about attention to detail and a lot of precision. And smudge tool is one of their best friend because of the control and precision it can offer. It can though take quite a long time to get exactly what you want, but it will you get the result.

1) In figure 1, it shows you where the smudge tool locate. Right in the middle of vertical tool bar.

figure 1.

In figure 2, it shows you my horrible scribble. #1 is, of course, smudge tool. I have no idea why I highlight circle that again. #2 Brush selection, click left or right on your Wacom pen (depending on where your setting) then select soft brush (default) for testing purpose. You can actually use any brush you desire with the smudge tool. You will have to try them out and see which gives you the best result. #3 Brush selection window and size. #4 is indication of how strong your smudge is going to be, the higher it is the more dragging power it will get.

figure 2

In figure 3, I did a sample demonstration using smudge tool to create type of edges. If you want to know why these type of edges are important in painting and illustration, go read three important rules for painting (there are actually more then three, but this is the starting point. If you can remember this and get it right, you can add on other technique to make your painting better) and Digital painting using custom brushes in Photoshop. OK. now I used hard round brush to create the first blob of paint with two contrast color. On the second blob, I used smudge tool with 50% or below strength to create soft edge. If you use more strength then the edge will be stronger (hence harder). On the third row, I try to use smudge tool to blend the whole blob with 20% or lower strength. I could have done a better job. Then the last one, I use 90% strength. Did you see what it does? It drag the darker color from one side to the other. It can do the same on the other side also. Smudge tool can be a very good tool to manipulate shape and get the precision on your edges. I believe more so than just regular hard and soft brush. You can make the brush size smaller and get down in to the detail with less mess than most brush tools. Now, you can go try it out. You never know it might be one of your favorite tool.

Monday, September 19, 2011

This post is all about environmental artist, especially for those of you who are interested in getting a job in video game industry. This article should be very informative and I try my best to actually explain what the environmental artist is.Environmental is basically all the elements, except characters and creatures, you see in a video game is what we create. So we come up with the sky, and the all the elements that are captured in the scene. Environment is very important to any video game, 90% of the screen is visually environmental art. It is a big part of the visual representation of the game itself. In most game studios, environmental artists work closely with level designers and designers. And their functions can be and often overlap.Basically how it works is in the initial stage, concept artist or environmental concept artist will design the look of the environmental, props, building, anything that you would consider what you can called backdrop or background in normal terms. Then environmental artist will build the 3D models base on the design. Once the props are finished, the level designers will take those 3D model and arrange them into the level. Each level has its own unique game play and plot or path that was already written by game designers. Yeah I know it sounds very confusing. All these functions can be perform by just one or two people if the game is small enough, but for the big scale video game some studios can have up to 60-80 people to perform these function.

In this blog post, I found a really useful video episode of the five-part Art of the Game series about the making of BioShock 2. In this video lead environment artist Hogarth de la Plante talks about his previous experience on the first BioShock and how the close working relationship between the art and design teams carried over into making this game. Explore the world of Ryan Amusements and how the level provides an opportunity to fill in the back story for those who have not played the first game while not boring those who already have played it.
The second video you will see an interview with Guild Wars 2 environmental artist, my former ArenaNet NCsoft colleague Tirzah Bauer.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

How to paint different ethnicity woman portrait for character design. Paint portrait character design technique for concept artist. In this article, I will show you a tutorial, tips and technique of how do we paint face or portrait of multi ethnicity for any video game. Many who have never involve in game or movie production often wonder why do we use digital tool instead of traditional media. Photoshop is a wonderful tool to paint and that cannot be without a Wacom tablet. For one of many reasons that I will show you in this tutorial, Photoshop of any professional computer painting program will save you a lot of time, sometimes it can save you days worth of work.In this tutorial, what I am doing is I am creating a facial feature template for one character's face from scratch.Like many of the tutorial in this blog I start sketching from just line work (quick drawing or sketch) then scan it into the PC. *Note* Most of the time, I usually start sketch inside the program, Photoshop. Then I paint a base color on to the figure. After I get the shape of her facial feature how I want, then I will finalize the painting design for the character. To see more in dept on how I design or draw face go see How to draw face, Drawing face step by step, and How to draw a man face comics. Once I finish painting her face, I then have a master template for more female character design. Though, this one I just show you the attractive female face design with similar feature and multi ethnicity. You can also manipulate the shape of the face and make her thicker, thinner, older or younger. It is all up to you.

Here is the first face I design and it will be use as a template for more design.

After I have the first facial feature for design, I can just paint over make her skin lighter or darker. I can paint her eyes to be different then nose, lips, overall shape of her face and it will take a lot less time than start a new face from scratch. This technique is widely use among concept artists when they have to design face for a character in detail. We also do a lot of this technique with armor and a lot of design we can implement to. Thank to the technology like digital painting and Photoshop.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Mass Effect 2 lead Concept Artist interview, Matt Rhodes. BioWare, Mass Effect 2, lead concept artist Matt Rhodes unveils his process of concept art for the game and tons of sketches created during the development of the game. Watch the process of how the original Mass Effect evolves into Mass Effect 2 and very informative artistic process from idea to paper then eventually translated into a living 3D universe. From characters, aliens, props, environment, equipment, the inner workings of the creative process for the epic sci-fi masterpiece and how critical the role of concept art actually is in video game development. This will be very educational for you guys.

Mass Effect concept art

Concept artist is basically one or a group of people generates a visual design for an item, character, or environment, scene base on original idea from the story or design. Most of the time these things don't exist. But most concept art bases on adaptation of existing world. This includes, but is not limited to, film production, animation production and more recently video game production.A concept artist may be required for nothing more than preliminary visual concept artwork, or may be required to be part of a creative team until a project reaches fruition. Concept artist must have a great skill and understanding of realistic art, stylize art depending on the setting. Also a concept artist have to work with strict deadlines in order to meet the milestone of the production schedule.Lead concept artist is basically the leader of the concept art team who will give you art direction and make sure the overall concept design goes well together.

**Some concept artists may start as fine artists, industrial designers, animators, or even special effects artists. Interpretation of ideas and how they are realized is where the concept artist's individual creativity is most evident, as subject matter is often beyond their control.

Below are the interview of lead concept artist from Mass Effect 2.

If you notice in the video, Matt Rhodes use Wacom Cintiq Large and Photoshop CS5. It is very common nowadays among concept artist in the video game studio. But as for the 3D software they use I am not sure, but most likely will be Z-brush, Maya and in house custom programs all together.

Monday, September 12, 2011

How to draw Asura from Guild Wars 2 with Concept Artist Matthew Barrett.I just received some goodies from ArenaNet. This is a video drawing tutorial demo of how a concept artist draw and paint a creature design from behind the scene making of Guild Wars 2Concept art is basically a pre production stage in game development. Characters and creatures need to have a clear concept, design, visual before going into production of 3d modeling. Most of concept artists I've know and work with use mostly Wacom tablet, big Cintiq and medium and large Intuo series. As for software the program that I see the most are Photoshop CS5 and Painter X. In this particular video, Matthew use Photoshop CS5 and Wacom tablet. Though in the video game production environment they do digital art using Wacom and Photoshop, all of them has superb traditional art skill with pencil and paper or many are really good traditional oil painters.

Matthew is a good friend of mine and former colleague a ArenaNet. As he does the how to drawing demo, he goes in depth about thought process that goes into designing good creature that will look and feel believable in the world setting.About the character Asura: The asura are a race of diminutive artisans who secretly dwelt below-ground for thousands of years until the minions of the Great Destroyer forced them out of their underground homes 250 years ago. Since then, they have adapted to surface life and quickly established themselves as one of the most powerful races in Tyria.
The asura are one of the five playable races in Guild Wars 2.
Asura are very short in comparison to human. Described as only coming up to the belt of a norn, an asura is usually about four feet tall. They typically have slender builds, with the head, hands, and feet in somewhat exaggerated proportions. The head in particular is a wide, flat ellipsoid whose width is extended further by large ears which usually droop from the sides of the head. Asura eyes are large and come in a variety of colors; their size is the evolutionary result of being a subterranean race. Their mouths are wide and filled with pointed, shark-like teeth. Asura typically have grayish skin and dark hair. Male and female asura are very similar in appearance; they are mostly differentiated by voice and ear structure.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Zombies survival MMO game sneak peek from Undead Labs. These are part the core people who started Guild Wars. Undead Labs is a newly formed game studio, headed by my old boss Jeff Strain. Jeff is the best boss ever, FYI! He came from Blizzard before forming ArenaNet, and it was his idea that has a lot to do with the most successful MMORPG up to date World of Warcraft.Anyway, Doug Williams, my former office mate, is the art director of the new project and knowing Doug, I am sure this game is going to look badass!You can see some Doug's concept art here: http://undeadlabs.com/2011/08/news/cry-baby/But here is what I am most excited about, the in game environment and lighting is beyond amazing!Using CryENGINE 3, the state-of-the-art engine has a well-deserved reputation for providing the graphics horsepower to create gorgeous games, and we’re squeezing it for all it’s worth to bring Doug’s “Faded Americana” vision for Class3 to life. With the cutting-edge technology of CryENGINE 3, combined with the experience and talent of our own Team Zed artists, we think we’re getting awfully damn close to achieving Doug’s vision, even at this early stage of development.

This is very exciting, and this is just the beginning and it is already look that AMAZING.I actually visit them a couple months ago and get my hand of some shooting Zombies action soooooooo much fun. I cannot show you or say any much more than just I AM DYING FOR THIS GAME TO RELEASE!!!Something I am looking forward to in a long while, just like in Guild Wars the first!!!

Thursday, September 8, 2011

How to paint master chief Halo digital painting tutorial. Here is another how to draw and paint character from video games. A lot of people ask me if Wacom tablet Intuo series with Photoshop is good for drawing on a computer. To me, naturally drawing is still better with pencil and paper. Wacom tablet and Photoshop or Painter is a great tool but still lack of the precision compare to sharp pointy pencil (If you are looking for a drawing). You can draw with your Wacom as a starting point, but the best thing about Wacom tablet is not in drawing but in rendering (shading) and painting (apply color and value), in short, finish up your illustration. So there is my two cents for Wacom. I still love drawing with pencil whenever I get a chance.Here in this tutorial post we have Master chief from Halo video and step by step. It is long over due. I meant to speed painting the character long time ago, but I didn't feel like it until now. ;-)As I mentioned earlier about Wacom. If you take a look at all my painting process, you will find that I use line draw as a starting point. Like in this tutorial, in the first step, you can really see the rough sketch, not so much of a drawing. Even though the sketch is really rough but it's the line economy and all these lines give me enough reference point to move on to the next step. Remember, you don't need to draw everything, just enough reference point for you to go on to the next stepping stone.Then I use the sketch to form shapes (see step 2). In painting, correct drawing and correct shape is very important. You have to get it as accurate as you can before go on to the next step because it is the very foundation of your painting. Get it wrong, you might have to start drawing it over.After shapes, I then try to apply value. In this tutorial, it is a study of a screenshot so I know exactly where to put my dark, mid and light. Because of study like this one, if you do a lot of painting study exercise, you will know what to do when it comes to your own concept art. When you paint your non-existing subject from your own idea, you borrow all the knowledge that store in your brain. Without knowing how to paint real life person, portrait, etc, you won't be able to create concept art from scratch. Anyway, below are the video tutorial of how to paint Master chief from Halo and step by step drawing along images.

About Master chief: The Master Chief is one of the most visible symbols of the Halo series. Originally designed by Bungie artists including Marcus Lehto, Rob McLees, and Shi Kai Wang, the character is a towering and faceless cybernetically-enhanced supersoldier; he is never seen without his green-colored armor or helmet. Downes built his personification of the Chief off a character description which called for a Clint Eastwood-type character of few words.Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 is a fictional character and protagonist of the Halo fictional universe, created by Bungie. Master Chief is a player character in the trilogy of science fiction first-person shooter video games Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3 and will appear in the upcoming Halo 4. Outside of video games, the character appears in novels - Halo: The Fall of Reach, Halo: The Flood, Halo: First Strike, and Halo: Uprising - and has cameos in other Halo media, including Halo: Reach, Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, The Halo Graphic Novel and Halo Legends. He is voiced by Chicago disc jockey Steve Downes in the video games in which he appears.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Wacom pen Inkling draw on paper. I actually just saw this product from Wacom, I know I am a little behind. It came out a while ago. When it comes to tools for integrating freehand art into the digital workflow, Wacom remains the leader.It is certainly aren't cheap, but it's hard to find any brand that can match the quality of Wacom professional standard hardware. The Inkling is a "digital sketch pen" that allows you to draw or sketch on any standard piece of paper (a big advantage over Livescribe, which requires special notebooks) and automatically have a digital version created. The pen looks like a regular ballpoint pen, but is much more powerful than that. As you draw, sketches, mind-maps, or brainstorms all get captured, pen stroke by pen stroke. You can even create layers as you sketch, and edit drawings even easier when you get back to the computer. Files can be accessed in applications like Photoshop and Illustrator, or just viewed on the computer.

If you’ve ever used a tablet before, you’ll know that the Inkling is a pretty amazing prospect. Wacom’s drawing tablets have always tried to mimic the experience of drawing on paper, but the majority of the time you’re applying a pen to a blank plastic surface and then looking up at a screen to see what you’re drawing; it’s not anywhere near the same as sketching on paper, and it comes with a significant adjustment period.Using Wacom Sketch Manager software that ships with the Inkling, you import your images as vector-based drawings that you can then manipulate in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator, as well as Autodesk Sketchbook Pro or Sketchbook Designer. You can also save files as plain old unlayered JPG, BMP, TIFF, PNG, SVG and PDF files if you’d rather not do much advanced editing to them after upload.

The Wacom Inkling will be available in mid-September, for $199. I really want to get my hand on that, but then I have been eyeing Intuo4 large for quite sometimes now. I will have to get that one first, whenever I have some extra money.

About Me

Xia Taptara (黃曉聲 Huang XiaoShēng), currently a professional freelance concept artist and illustrator for games and films, formerly a concept/ 3d character artist for ArenaNet (GuildWars & Guildwars 2), NcSoft Seattle from 2002 to Sept 2010. I also did various of illustrations and concepts for many publishers & clients (Song of Ice and Fire: Game of Thrones, Cthulhu series, Pathfinder, Winnie the Pooh, Monster Inc., and more). I use Wacom Tablet Intuos and Photoshop CS2,3,4,5 to do most of my professional art work. I use pencil, pen, and traditional medium in my free time. I founded IdrawGirls.com (TheArtClasses.com) in 2007 to motivate myself to create more and better art. Also I get to draw and paint whatever the hell I want to. Hopefully I can inspired some young soul and old soul alike.
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